Open Your Eyes

Pierce Farm Watch

Thomas posed for his picture on a warm autumn afternoon, despite great difficulty breathing and the pain from a large tumor on his chest. Three days later he would be dead.

Papa Billy was once a strong, handsome three-year-old boy. Two years later he couldn't walk without falling and was disposed of at a livestock auction.

Bandit hadn't seen anything with her right eye in months. Cancer had eaten away the globe. Only an empty socket and oozing puss remained. Her fate: the same as Papa Billy.

Welcome to Pierce Farm Watch, the web site resource for public monitoring, documenting, and reporting animal health, welfare, housing, and management conditions on the Los Angeles Pierce College farm. We hope you will use this site and its information to effect positive change on this campus and in your community for the betterment of all animals who live here.

We conceived this project as a grassroots, collaborative effort to inform and empower those who truly embody the definition of "stakeholders" in the California community college master plan, now and for the future. We took two beliefs as our guiding principles:

"Be the change you want to see in the world."
"Think globally. Act locally."

Whether you are new to the campus or a returning student, a
new neighborhood resident, or a someone with long-term involvement in community leadership, there is something here for you. If you care about the lives of animals, the quality of public education, and the appropriation of your tuition, fees, and tax dollars, there is something here for you, too.

Being an advocate for animals and the responsible use of limited, critical public education resources isn't as difficult as it may seem. It starts in your own backyard, where this facility is, in the heart of the San Fernando Valley.

It starts with the idea that compassion and the daily, requisite acts of caring for animals cannot be defined by self-serving interests, mandated by curriculum preference, or discharged according to public employee union rules. Those whose salaries you pay and pensions you fund have a financial, operational, legal, and ethical obligation to perform their duties, to spend your money judiciously, to be ever mindful of public trust and public accountability.

It's too late for Bandit, Papa Billy and Thomas. But you can help other animals like them before it is again. Open Your Eyes.